3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is currently developing the standards for 5G, also known as next generation (NG) systems. It is expected that 5G will support many new scenarios and use cases and will be an enabler for Internet of things (IoT). It is expected that NG systems will provide connectivity to a wide range of new devices such as sensors, smart wearables, vehicles, machines, etc. Flexibility is thus a key property in NG Systems. This is reflected in security requirement for network access that are mandating the support of alternative authentication methods and different types of credentials, compared to the usual authentication and key agreement (AKA) credentials pre-provisioned by an operator and securely stored in a universal integrated circuit card (UICC). This would allow factory owners or enterprises to leverage their own identity and credential management systems for authentication and access network security.
Among the new features in NG Systems is the concept of network slicing. A network slice (NS) is basically an instance of a core network dedicated to provide a particular service. This will allow operators to handle a wide variety of new use cases, each with different service requirements in in terms of Quality of Service (QoS). For example, an operator could be running a NS for usual mobile broadband (MBB) services, in parallel with a mission critical NS for public safety services (such as Mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT)) requiring very low latency, further in parallel with an IoT NS for electricity meters with very low bandwidth.
Among topics being studied in relation to Network Slicing is the decoupling of authentication and authorization procedures for accessing different NSs.